


Rubans

by joestarfamily



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Day 1, Excessive Gashes/Lacerations, Gore, In a manner of speaking, M/M, Minor Religious Themes, Torture, Yeah maybe I wrote part of this during school, breaking bones, challenge, goretober, idk let me know if i need to tag it anything else, maybe i dont care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2441807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joestarfamily/pseuds/joestarfamily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He gazes up at Heaven as though it still needed him. But his mission has ended early, it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rubans

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts before editing: Day one of that cool Goretober Challenge, as well as my very first fanfiction posted on AO3. Three cheers for me?

Ribbons of skin fall away like clothing.

The man bares his teeth and writhes, acknowledging his wrath as well as his agony.

You watch attentively. Small drops of blood leak from between his lips; surprising, really, as so much flows from his open wounds. Each of his four eyes twitches, and you grin.

“We meet again, _mon ami!_ ”

The shadows part to reveal you and he sneers with a mouth full of sharp teeth. He tries to speak, too. Muscles stretch and his vocal cords tighten and loosen and flecks of red paint color on his cheeks. But all his exertion bears no fruit.

It is more appropriate that way.  Regardless of what exact language he used, you knew firmly that whatever he said would not be very polite. No, not at all.

An ease born of impossible calm carries you to his side, and you kneel daintily in the pool leaking over the ground beneath him.

Once upon a time, the uniform that covered him shone, clean and starched and fitting in all aspects. A hero’s guise hiding a devil’s visage. Now the garment is tattered beyond any sort of repair. Much like the man himself, if you consider the concept (you do, in fact).

Your _Batteur_ starts to reach for his weapon. Perhaps you two have different senses of humour. His fingers wrap around the smaller end of his bat, and somehow he’s managed to grasp it. You notice the bruises all along his arm, and the strain his wrist seems to undergo. It would hurt, greatly, if he were to try and raise it. And how could you allow such a thing? The singular profession assigned to you was that of _helper,_ of _provider._ You were the closest thing this dreadful saviour had to a guardian, and as such, you were to watch. To _guard_. Of what value is a duty when done less than wholeheartedly?

So you rise, crush his wrist beneath polished black shoes, and savor the delightful crunch of his bones. Only because you must. Only because you know he’ll be safer, in the end, if he is not permitted to thrash about. You remind yourself of that when you stare too long, entranced by his position in the pool. His arms are stretched out, palms up; his legs are together, smeared with blood and dirt, but relatively unmarred. The black baseball cap, the perfect final accessory to his strange costume, is nowhere to be found. For the first time, you can see his hair, gaze upon the perfection of his face. (Barely long enough to begin curling, shorter than yours and differently colored. He has eyes and a nose and a mouth and they are all lovely.)

Once more, you chastise yourself. Your assignment is not to _look,_ no matter how fair the object of attention.

Would he be screaming now, if he could? You ponder the idea. If he could, perhaps he would. But he cannot, so he won’t. Simple. You chase your thoughts like rather lengthy tails, like rather interesting answers to rather unusual questions. Like an incomparatively attractive man wasn’t bleeding a life away underneath you.

He breathes the way you suppose a child would, with tiny, underdeveloped lungs and vague knowledge of how they were used. The fragile sound is only noticeable when you close your eyes and focus all your efforts on _listening._

Life, you have learned, is entirely about the things one does not perceive without focus.

Paintings in apparently endless tunnels, the way skin unwinds from flesh. How much finer lips taste lightly coated in iron.

Gently, gently you stoke the gashes decorating the man’s arms. A few stray apart from the rest, but most are interwoven. Grander patterns rarely found, in your opinion.

His eyes, each and every one, roll backwards into his head. Deciding whether or not he is as overjoyed as you are is a difficult matter indeed. Believing so brings more of a smile onto your face.

Nimble fingers sink into layers of muscle and (all too quickly) reach bone. Nerves under your skin may as well give off light; surely they burn. You can feel the ecstasy down to your soul and your breaths number fewer than his.

The _Great_ and _Mighty_ and _Holy_ Batter is meeting his glorious destruction not at the consummation of his sacrosanct quest but in the embrace of an unprofitable peddler. An end befitting this ill-conceived odyssey, you judge.

The spectre who incapacitated him you refer to as Providence, for who else could hear a prayer from a pathetic degenerate hiding in a mask?

What a fool you had been with your _Luck_ and your _Fortune_. The body before you was so many times sweeter sliced, dissected. You’d made mistakes in your past (a lion’s share, to be truthful), but without exception they seemed predestined in this moment, missteps intricately planned with wisdom and, dare you say, _grace_.

Faint shapes float in the tributaries around his face. Minute circles and infinitesimal crosses dance near his head. Since you’re so charitable, so pious, you trace them.

Maybe it’s a presumptuous move, unbefitting an individual of your station, but suddenly you giggle. It feels good, genuine, and it cuts the tension in your shoulders. You kiss those most blessed incisions and not once do you cease laughing.

Your would-be lover, your fairy-tale paramour regards Heaven as if it still had business for him. He hasn’t yet realized that the closing act plays out with the prideful accepting destruction and the haughty spirits stumbling into oblivion. How marvelous it must be, to hope even unto ruination.

By what means did he learn something so against his nature, so contrary to his programming? You can feel precious time slipping away, and his heart prepares to explode beneath a punctured lung. It isn’t fair. Death, for him, may well be a joke. He is reborn when a new game starts; You suffer alone in the darkness until you first meet again. The ability to change, to reach out into the future and demand more, should not have been his.

Instantaneously, the realization hits you. Glass detonates and lights fade for the final time and you scream victoriously, _Le Dieu, le Seigneur, le Créateur!_ and in the blink of an eye there is nothing at all.  
  
**GAME IS OVER**

   
  
 

**Author's Note:**

> First thoughts after finishing: i am tired send help


End file.
